Stewardship's Trial by Forests.

PILOT PROJECTS REVAMP STRATEGIES AND COALS FOR NATIONAL FORESTS.

George Ramirez tugs at his hat, grips the edge of a podium, and faces a crowd of U.S. Forest Service officials in a downtown Washington, DC, conference room. This is unfamiliar territory for Ramirez, a woodcutter and rancher from rural New Mexico. He has come to report to the federal agency for Las Humanas, a cooperative of land grant villages. More than 100 members have just completed a 16-acre thinning project on the Cibola National Forest.

"We showed we have the labor force and the skills to improve the forest," he says. "It gives a lot of pride in our community to do this work."

New partnerships are bringing people like Ramirez to the nation's capital and driving the Forest Service into innovations on national forests from Oregon to New Hampshire. The projects are transforming the type of work done on federal lands, how it is done, and who does it.

Some call this new approach to forest management collaborative stewardship, others call it stewardship contracting or ecosystem management. By any name, the changes hold promise--for the forests and for the communities surrounded by national forests. At a time when federal land managers are shifting their objectives from commercial logging to restoring ecosystems, these stewardship projects test new strategies for managing the woods and new systems for contracting the work. Instead of focusing on what's removed from the forest, they focus on what is left.

For the rural communities that have advocated a greater role in forest management decisions, the stewardship projects represent a major milestone (see "Local Voices. National Issues," Winter 1998). After nearly a decade of campaigning for work that improves the national forests in their backyards and provides local jobs, they now boast a variety of on-the-ground projects with tangible results. In addition to Ramirez's Las Humanas thinning project in New Mexico, a coalition in Swan Valley, Montana, has harvested small trees from three different forest stands where they plan to use prescribed burning to maintain the natural spacing. In southwestern Colorado, the Ponderosa Pine Forest Partnership combined thinning and slash removal on 450 acres to test whether it could market and make a profit from small-diameter trees.

Compared to the multimillion board-feet timber sales of the past, these s stewardship projects are minuscule. They involve little commercial logging, use local labor, and emphasize restoration. Although Forest Service officials recognize that the era of clearcutting and industrial timber sales has waned, many hesitate to embrace the innovations proposed by community groups. Even enthusiastic proponents involved in developing the proposals have struggled to fit unfamiliar and unconventional activities into everyday government rounds.

Successful projects require enormous cooperation and creativity to incorporate nontraditional activities into a rigid bureaucratic system. They depend on the ideas and entrepreneurial skills of civic and timber industry leaders, woods workers, and state and federal officials. Working together, these partners have developed novel solutions for problems that once seemed impossible.

One of the most stubborn issues has been how to pay contractors for their restoration work. Historically, the Forest Service has funded thinning, tree planting, and other forest rehabilitation through timber sales. Stewardship projects typically produce no commercial sawlogs, which leaves the agency with no funding mechanism. A community coalition in northwestern Montana came up with a one-time solution to demonstrate the effects of restoring 112 acres of the Flathead National Forest to a patchwork of old-growth and younger trees. The Cedar Flats project involved some logging but the contractor was hired primarily to improve the woods, not harvest timber, says Carol Daly, president of the Flathead Economic Policy Center in Montana. Left with no way to pay for his services, the coalition raised $120,000 in foundation funds, a system Daly calls "forestry by bake sale."

Other dilemmas that community groups and Forest Service officials encounter involve bundling several different jobs into one contract and extending contracts over several years to make the work economically feasible. Thinning, road removal, and stream restoration, for example, historically have been separate contracts issued by separate Forest Service branches. Most of these service contracts have required completion within a year.

As the number of proposals for stewardship forestry has grown and pressure from communities increased, Forest Service officials have felt compelled to respond.

Some of the projects are nontraditional but permissible under existing law. Others seemed worth trying but clearly do not comply with current federal regulations.

In 1998 the Forest Service turned to Capitol Hill for help. Late that year Congress approved legislation directing the agency to implement 28 pilot projects that would test contracting and funding mechanisms not authorized by government statutes. These stewardship pilot projects ranged from creating a high-elevation habitat for neotropical birds in Tennessee to an Idaho project that uses logging and prescribed burns to restore elk habitat along the Clearwater River. Several demonstrate ways to improve the use of local workers' skill and knowledge. Others test new methods of harvesting timber and new ways to pay for it. All the demonstration projects require monitoring by agencies and individuals, in addition to using evaluators from a variety of perspectives, this experiment in monitoring will test the collaborative approach to gathering scientific data.

The legislation represents "a big giant step" toward legitimizing community-based forestry within the Forest Service and beyond, says Lynn chair of the Seventh American Forest Congress Communities Committee. "There's hope, some belief that local people can do some good things for the forest. And the restoration work gives us a shot at restoring these small economies," she says.

But recognition of the role communities play in national forest management has been slow to move from Washington, DC, to the ground, and it has not always brought material results. The forest thinning done on the Cibola Forest by Las Humanas is one of the few Forest Service-sponsored stewardship projects completed in the 18 months since the legislation was adopted. In fact, it is one of the few for which work has even started. Most are mired in bureaucracy, their sponsors struggling to get them out of discussion and onto the ground.

So if everyone thinks they're a good idea, what's blocking the projects? In short, a dearth of funds and a federal agency uncertain of its mandate and its mission. Forest stewardship projects also face opposition from environmentalists who fear they are often little more than timber sales masquerading as forest restoration projects.

Cliff Hickman, a Forest Service official who coordinates the stewardship projects from the national office, puts some of the blame on the controversy that surrounds the agency's every action. How contractors are paid and what happens to the money are issues hotly disputed even in demonstration projects, he says.

Controversy has contributed to the funding problems that have plagued the stewardship pilots since Congress approved them. The legislators awarded no money for work last year and halved the Forest Service's request for this year. Several projects have been delayed because local district officials do not have the money to pay for required environmental studies. Hickman hopes Congress will authorize all of the $4 million the Forest Service requested for fiscal year 2001.

Along with funding, he acknowledges that confusion within the Forest Service has helped stall implementation of the plot projects. Communication is sometimes poor and anything "new and different from the traditional" causes some Forest Service officials to balk, Hickman says. Many of the experiments in stewardship combine timber sales and service contracts, functions that have historically been handled by different branches within the agency. Others require negotiations with groups new to the Forest Service and to government contracting. Still, Hickman is cautiously optimistic that all 28 pilot projects will be under contract by the September 2002 deadline.

The delays are frustrating to Ramirez, chairman of the Las Humanas Cooperative. Working on the Cibola Forest project showed that his community can overcome its historic unemployment--sometimes as high as 45 percent--and produce workers with skills to do thinning that improves the health of the forest. In exchange for their labor, available mostly on weekends, Las Humanas members kept the trees they cut. Some of the material was used for firewood and some for traditional fencing and viga poles used in southwestern houses.

"The Forest Service always said they had no dependable workers. We always said it was because there are no dependable jobs. We broke that cycle," says Ramirez.

Now Las Humanas wants to turn this labor force onto 5,000 acres of federal land in the nearby Estancia Basin. The valley southeast of Albuquerque is a critical water recharge area in desperate need of attention. Las Humanas plans to return the basin to a more natural state by thinning some sections, fencing cattle out of others, and leaving large islands undisturbed for wildlife. The missing ingredient: money.

"It's very aggravating," Ramirez says. "We do a successful project and we're supposed to go back to starving? I can't figure out why we have to struggle and beg when we produce a success."

Elsewhere the hurdles for stewardship forestry are even more daunting. The Grassy Flats project near Hayfork, California, was designed to remove small-diameter trees from fire-prone thickets to test the effect on forest health. Local business owners also wanted to test the economic feasibility of milling these 10-inch diameter trees for furniture, flooring and other finished products.

The project was poised for a promising start. Local entrepreneurs had already built and tested special equipment to handle the logs without damaging other trees or the forest floor (see "A Junk to Jobs Experiment," Autumn 1998). Loggers had thinned 40 acres of Trinity National Forest nearby and were ready to move onto the 270-acre Grassy Flats area when a federal court ruling brought everything to a standstill. According to the ruling, before the Forest Service can do anything that disturbs the ground, it must first complete a series of federally mandated surveys of mollusks and 235 other species.

Although local crews were trained and set to do the survey work, they could not afford to wait while the Forest Service completed the paperwork, says the Communities Committee's Jungwirth, who is also executive director of the Watershed Research and Training Center in Hayfork. This spring the Forest Service hired a Canadian firm to survey the Trinity Forest for mollusks.

Using out-of-area crews is a familiar and discouraging trend, says Jungwirth. From 1990 to 1997 local workers captured a meager 6 percent of the more than $1 million of service work contracted annually in the national forest. Now they are seeing restoration work go to outside workers, too. That threatens the critical link between forests and communities, Jungwirth says.

"We know what happened to our communities when we were colonized by big companies around timber. How are we not going to recolonize rural communities around biodiversity?" she says.

Environmentalists have been watching the stewardship program with a wariness that ranges from distrust to outright opposition. The National Audubon Society welcomes the emphasis on forest restoration but is concerned about including any commercial timber sales--even small ones--in stewardship contracts. A system that allows contractors to keep logs in exchange for removing them provides an incentive to take more timber than may be good for the forest, says Michael T. Leahy, Audubon's forest campaign director.

All but two of the 28 pilot projects include some form of logging. Although they are generally small and do not use traditional timber sale methods, cutting any trees for lumber fuels environmentalists' suspicion that stewardship contracting is little more than a mask for commercial timber harvesting, says Steve Holmer, campaign coordinator for American Lands Alliance. The Forest Service may have heightened those suspicions when Anne Bartuska, director of national forest timber management, told a Senate subcommittee that stewardship contracting is the future of the agency's timber sale program.

Giving loggers the timber they remove in exchange for the service they perform is not an improvement, Holmer says. "The notion that the Forest Service will stop selling trees in timber sales and instead start just giving them away as part of stewardship contracts is a huge step in the wrong direction."

What many urban-based environmentalists overlook is the deep bond between communities and the health of the national forests that surround their small towns, says Jungwirth. Rural coalitions don't want a return to the days of big-volume timber sales, when they watched log trucks roll bumper to bumper down Main Street, exporting more logs out of town than even the loggers thought prudent. They also don't want a return to the 1990s, when some of their neighbors left their families at home for out-of-town jobs while others paraded down Main Street in moving vans and left town altogether.

If they can survive this experimental phase and usher in stewardship forestry as a permanent Forest Service program, rural leaders believe both their communities and the woods will be better off. Stewardship forestry can restore national forests and create high-skilled living-pay jobs "so dads can sleep at home at night," says Jungwirth.

Far Ramirez, that means fewer trips to DC. For his rural New Mexico community, it could mean an end to 45 percent unemployment. "Things are changing," says Ramirez, "They've already changed for us. Maybe this can work all over this country."

Jane Braxton Little covers environmental topics from Greenville, California.

A CONVERSATION WITH SENATOR JEFF BINGAMAN 

Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) is ranking minority member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over forest and public land management. As ranking member, Bingaman has helped put community-based forestry on the congressional agenda. He has introduced legislation to promote community forestry and has promoted increased federal funding for forest restoration and rural community assistance programs.

Q: You have shown considerable interest in the relationship between communities and environmental restoration. Why is this important to you?

A: I grew up in Silver City, New Mexico, a forested community adjacent to Gila National Forest. I learned firsthand about the inter-connection between people and the land around them. Forests and adjacent communities depend on each other for their long-term sustainability. Ecosystem restoration is needed on many of our national forests to reestablish healthy, fire adaptive forestlands and to increase water resources. We can meet the challenge of restoring the land if we build partnerships between the Forest Service, local communities, and the interested public. Creating those partnerships is critical to a progressive forest policy. That is why I introduced the Community Forest Restoration Act (S. 1288) to establish an experimental grant program m New Mexico for community-based forest restoration projects--including those that seek to create jobs in the communities near or within national forests. The bill unanimously passed the Senate last year and was recently approved by a key House committee.

Q: What are the key of this relationship for you?

A: An open decisionmaking process that fosters innovation from the local level on up; job training, including youth opportunities through the Youth Conservation Corps and partnerships with state, local, and nonprofit youth corps; creating new forest products, particularly using small diameter trees and finding markets for them; and building community capacity to compete for restoration jobs and contracts.

Q: What can be done to help sustain both community well-being and the health of the land? What laws, policies, or institutional practices--for example, the way the Forest Service relates to external groups--are barriers that must be overcome?

A: One major obstacle is access to Forest Service contracts. Federal contracting for national forest system lands needs to be reconfigured to accommodate medium, small, and micro businesses, which often are based in rural communities surrounded by national forests. Creating access will assist communities in avoiding the boom and bust cycle of the past.

Healthy natural resource-based communities include a diverse array of enterprises that use and produce products as well as highly skilled workers who conduct and monitor restoration activities. Historically, there have been few small businesses in rural communities adjacent to national forests because most residents worked for the Forest Service or large timber companies.

Our knowledge of the dynamics of forest systems has changed and now various products can be used from our forests. Working together, I believe communities and the Forest Service can create new and viable business opportunities.

Q: What is your opinion on authorities versus funding?

A: Both Congress and the Forest Service need to make a major investment in restoration work on national forest lands. The Forest Service used to fund most of its restoration projects using timber sale receipts, but the volume of timber harvested has decreased, making it increasingly difficult to fund activities using only those revenues. I believe some inherent incentives exist, created both by provisions of existing laws and regulations, that result in Forest Service decisions and actions detrimental to communities. However, I am of the view that legislators, like doctors, should be guided by the rule: "first do no harm." Sometimes, in an effort to provide a quick fix, normal legislative processes are abandoned. Forest practitioners pursuing legislative initiatives should follow regular procedures. Doing so will substantially increase support and acceptance of community-based forestry.

Q: What specific funding initiatives and legislation have you sponsored with the goal of advancing community-based forestry? What chances do your proposals have in Congress?

A: I just reached an agreement with Senator Murkowski [R-Alaska], Chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, on a comprehensive conservation bill. This legislation uses oil and gas revenues from the outer continental shelf to protect our natural and cultural legacy for future generations. The theory is that, as we deplete a non-renewable resource, we should invest the revenue received into conserving other resources.

Our compromise includes stable funding, for a period of 15 years, for a number of different programs that advance community-based forestry. For example, the compromise legislation provides annual funding in the amount of $25 million each for the Forest Service's Economic Recovery and Rural Development Forest Service programs. Our compromise has bipartisan support and was recently approved by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee by a vote of 13-7. A similar bill passed the House of Representatives at the end of last year, and the Administration has been a strong advocate of enacting this type of legislation.

Q: You have invited practitioners to testify at a number of congressional hearings and engaged in a rather unique open-dialogue process. What have you learned from them and from this process?

A: The more I learn about community-based forest practitioners, the more I support them. I believe forest practitioners represent the future of our country's forests because they are creatively finding ways to ensure that communities and forests successfully coexist by depending on one another.

While we were preparing for the first hearing that focused on forest practitioners, AMERICAN FORESTS suggested that the chairs and tables be placed in a square to enhance an environment of collaboration. All participants, including senators, faced one another at an equal level. I believe this hearing was one of the best the subcommittee ever held, There was a lot of interaction among participants, which provided everyone with a better understanding of the issues.

Q: How can the Forest Service work more closely with communities? What role should local communities play in managing our national forests?

A: Our national forests are a unique and invaluable asset. We must recognize the communities within and adjacent to them as an integral part of tins asset. It is important to recognize the significance of local and traditional knowledge of the land and incorporate such knowledge into decisions made about activities on national forests. My bill, which I mentioned earlier, S. 1288, expressly recognizes the value of such knowledge.

Q: Many community-based practitioners view multi-party monitoring as essential in reducing conflict and promoting learning through forestry projects, particularly on public lands. How important is monitoring of Forest Service projects? What kind of information would be most helpful to you? How can Congress reemphasize the need for better monitoring and ensure agencies have sufficient resources and direction?

A: I agree with community-based practitioners that multi-party monitoring is extremely important. Not only does it promote collaboration, open dialogue, and trust, but monitoring also can create high-skill jobs in rural communities.

The most useful monitoring information includes both baseline data, an identification of the desired future condition, and an assessment of whether the desired future condition was achieved. In addition, it is helpful to discuss the lessons learned from various projects. There seems to be a tendency to avoid sharing information about projects that fell short of their objectives. I believe there is a great deal we can learn from all experiments and projects as we strive to ensure the long-term sustainability of our communities and the forests that surround them.

Congress should continue to reiterate the importance of monitoring by including monitoring requirements in all legislation involving forests. In addition, Congress can fulfill its oversight responsibilities to ensure that federal land management agencies are conducting effective monitoring.

A CONVERSATION WITH SENATOR LARRY CRAIG

Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) chairs the Forests and Public Land Management Subcommittee of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He has invited community practitioners to help design and participate in several hearings and has been willing to modify hearing procedures so witnesses could have a facilitated dialogue rather than simply present testimony. As a farmer and rancher from Idaho, Senator Craig brings a great deal of personal knowledge and experience to discussions of community-based forestry.

Q: You have shown considerable interest in the relationship between communities and environmental restoration. Why is this important to you?

A: I grew up in Idaho surrounded by national forests, and I now represent the state of Idaho. Forty-three percent of people in Idaho live in rural communities. Parents in rural families should be able to give their children the same opportunities they had when they were growing up, and opportunities similar to those in urban areas today. The counties in Idaho that rely heavily on natural resource-based industries are facing double-digit unemployment rates, as are many other rural, resource-dependent communities across the country. Many rural areas are suffering from persistent poverty because of unemployment, underemployment, and the lack of opportunities for rural citizens. Our objective should be to keep our rural communities economically viable and vibrant.

Q: What are the key dimensions of this relationship for you?

A: Stable jobs and the quality of the environment are two obvious key dimensions. These ideas form the foundation for life in rural communities. This is fundamentally contrary to the message that national environmental groups, and increasingly the Forest Service, are sending out about logging and other resource-based jobs. The environment provides a source of stable jobs for people who live with the land. People who make their living on their land and who live in the surrounding communities are more likely to make sure that the environment is cared for because it is in their best interest to do so. Job security gives people a sense of worth and a sense of pride and encourages them to take ownership in their community and develop a strong community infrastructure.

Q: What can be done to help sustain both community well-being and the health of the land? What laws, policies, or practices--for example, the way the Forest Service relates to external groups--are barriers that must be overcome?

A: I think we need to continue to authorize and fund programs like the Forest Service's Economic Action Program and Stewardship Contracting Program, both of which bring communities and the Forest Service together to collaborate on ways to be stewards of the forest and the communities. I think local considerations ought to be higher on the list of considerations when forest plans and major initiatives are developed.

Q: What is your opinion on authorities versus funding?

A: I think I will always choose new authorities as the more important question. You can't throw money at a problem and expect it to disappear. There must be a plan in place that lays out how money will be used to fix a specified problem. Adequate funding is important. Also important is how authority is utilized. We all know how authority used the wrong way can cause more problems than solutions. National Monument designation is one such authority that has only compounded problems, with this administration designating monuments all over the western United States without any consideration of local impacts or desires. I believe workable solutions take a combination of authorization and funding, along with strong oversight by either Congress or a local collaborative group.

Q: What specific funding initiatives and legislation have you sponsored with the goal of advancing community-based forestry? What chances do your proposals have in Congress?

A: In the 105th Congress I strongly supported the Quincy Library Group legislation that authorized the use of a collaborative group for forest management decisionmaking. I also supported in the 1999 Omnibus Appropriations Bill, Sec. 347, authorizing stewardship contracting pilot projects. The Forest Service's Economic Action Program is another community-based program I support and that my subcommittee oversees. And S. 1608, a bill I am cosponsoring with Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, strongly ties communities to their environment and is appropriately titled the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 1999. It stabilizes payments made to rural counties dependent upon federal lands.

Q: You have invited community-based practitioners to testify at a number of congressional hearings and engaged in a rather unique open-dialogue process. What have you learned from them and from this process?

A: I have learned that if you provide people with an opportunity to participate in collaborative management, they will come to the table with arms wide open. Now, this doesn't mean that they won't disagree on issues, but this means that they will take the first step and begin the dialogue. And, mare often than not, they will find solutions.

Q: How can the Forest Service work more closely with communities? What role should local communities play in planning and managing our national forests?

A: There are 1,600 counties dependent upon natural resources that are adversely affected by land management decisions. Of these, 1,300 counties are located within 100 miles of national forest boundaries. These facts speak volumes about the important role communities must take in making land management decisions. Congress must take steps to ensure that decisions made collaboratively are not easily trumped by presidential proclamations and' Washington office politics.

Q: Generally, community-based practitioners believe common-ground solutions can be found through a collaborative process. What opportunities exist in Congress for collaboration or bipartisan support of community-based forestry proposals?

A: I think we've already discussed many examples of this. Another example, and I think the most recent, is the hazardous fuels reduction amendment offered by Senator Domenici to the Fiscal Year 2001 Interior Appropriations Bill. This amendment drew strong support from both sides of the aisle for protecting communities from the danger of unnaturally large and uncontrolled wildfire.

Q: Many community-based practitioners view multi-party monitoring as essential in reducing conflict and promoting learning through forestry projects, particularly on public lands. How important is monitoring of Forest Service projects? What kind of information would be most helpful to you? How can Congress reemphasize the need for better monitoring and ensure agencies have sufficient resources and direction?

A: As chairman of the subcommittee that oversees Forest Service operations, I believe oversight of their programs is essential. I want to know, and be able to relate to Congress, how effective these programs are at sustaining communities and forests, Congress must ask, how successful are the programs m the community? Do people feel they are playing a substantive role in their community's development through a specific program? Multiparty monitoring is an essential part of projects that continues the collaboration. It is essential to the success of each project.

Q: How does community-based forestry resonate with your constituents? Do you feel it holds promise to address your state's forestry concerns? As chairman, do you feel community-based forestry has support and promise nationally? Why or why not?

A: Community-based forestry resonates well with Idahoans. We are currently participating in the stewardship pilot program and are finding it a great success. In addition, the State Land Board is looking at new community-based forestry proposals. This is the wave of the future.